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Zoe
Zoe looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching. It appeared she was alone. She tentatively stepped up onto the creaky, partially rotten front porch of the small shack. She couldn’t believe she’d lain down on this thing.
She stopped and turned back to the street. This vantage point felt incredibly familiar. She closed her eyes and tried to remember that night. The sound of his voice. The feel of his arms. The smell of him. She’d felt so safe in his arms. And it was unlike any safety she’d ever felt before. Not only had she felt safe from any threats around her, but she’d felt safe to be herself.
Her eyes popped open, and tears sprang into them. She grabbed a post to steady herself.
Oh no.
That hallucination had been real, hadn’t it? Somehow, right then, she knew that it had been. It hadn’t been the moonshine. It hadn’t been a dream or a vision. It had really happened. How else could she have gotten all the way home?
She let herself slide down until she was sitting. Her breath came fast as the reality of it washed over her. If it had been real, what did that mean?
She closed her eyes again. “God, are you real?” she whispered. “Are you really out there?” She laughed at herself. This was preposterous. “If you are real, can you show me?” As soon as she whispered the words, she was embarrassed of them. He already had shown her. He’d picked her up and carried her home. He’d spoken to her.
You know better than this ... This is not who you are ... This is not where you’re supposed to be ...
Her tears came harder and faster. She bowed her head. She was so sick of crying, and she wasn’t sure she had the fluid to support another fit of it. “How do I know better than this, God? And if this isn’t who I am, then who am I? Where am I supposed to be?”
And then she remembered her eighth birthday party. The crushing disappointment. The embarrassment. The loneliness that felt like drowning.
And then she remembered the hug that had come after. The presence. The peace.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, and her voice didn’t even sound like her own. “You’re real, aren’t you?” He had to be. He was real, and he’d been there all along. Hadn’t Rachel said something like that? God had had his hand on her for a long time. She remembered knowing him when she was little. She remembered when he’d shown up after her failed birthday party. “Okay,” she said aloud, “I give up. I’ll stop fighting you. I’ll stop kicking against the ... against the whatever. I’m sorry.”
A feeling settled over her then, permeating every layer of herself. She didn’t know what to call it. It was warm, it was peaceful, it was real. It felt supernatural and completely natural at the same time—like she’d been waiting for that exact feeling for her entire life, and now it had come. She opened her eyes and looked up. She almost expected to see someone else there, but there was no one, and then she felt silly. Yet weren’t the falling leaves golder than they’d been before? Wasn’t the sky bluer? What was happening to her? “I give up,” she whispered. “But you’d better show me what to do because I have no idea.”
There was no answer, but Zoe got the idea that under the circumstances, the best place for her to be was with Gramma and Rachel. So she got up and headed back toward the church.
She felt lighter. Walking felt easier. There was a new feeling in her heart, and it took her a minute to give it a name, but then it came to her: hope.
As she approached the church, she noticed that the graffiti was gone. And as she got closer, she could see that the sign had been repainted. And whoever had done it had done a great job.
Neither Gramma nor Rachel seemed surprised to see her.
“The sign looks good. Who fixed it?”
Gramma shrugged. “That little girl’s family paid someone to do it. I assume he was a professional because he was very fast.”
Figures that she wouldn’t have to fix the sign herself.
“Can we help you?” Rachel looked amused.
“Actually, I came to help you. So, what can I do?”
Rachel looked at her curiously. “You look good.” Her words were layered with meaning.
Zoe smiled at her. “I feel pretty good.” She was tempted to tell them more, to tell them everything, but she didn’t know how to explain what had just happened.
Rachel returned the smile. “Good.”
Gramma’s eyes traveled back and forth between them. “We’re tearing up these tiles.”
Zoe looked at the floor. There were tiles, for sure, and some of them had been ripped up by feet from long ago or from time itself, but she didn’t see any evidence that anyone had ripped up any tiles today.
“Well, we haven’t exactly gotten started yet,” Rachel admitted. She handed her a scraping tool. “Here’s a spatula.”
Zoe took it from her hand. “Thanks. Why are we ripping these up?” As she got down on her hands and knees, it occurred to her that she had made a mistake in coming here.
“There’s a rumor that there might be mold beneath them. And either way, it would be good to get new flooring down, so Vera doesn’t catch her cane in these holes anymore.”
Yes, that did make sense. So, for the love of Vera, Zoe started scraping up tiles. They came more easily than she’d anticipated, and soon Rachel had appeared beside her with a spatula of her own. Gramma had disappeared.
“You know, I was thinking ...”
“Yes?” Rachel sounded intrigued.
“If you wouldn’t mind supervising, I think it would help me stay out of trouble if I kept helping out around here.”
She could almost feel Rachel’s joy emanating off her. “Of course I wouldn’t mind! I think that’s a fine idea!”
Awesome. So she did have friends in Carver Harbor. A couple of eighth graders and an old woman. She grinned. She also had Jason. She should be his friend. It made no sense to give up his friendship just because he wasn’t in love with her.
She stopped and sat back on her butt. Rachel raised an eyebrow at her.
“Don’t worry. I’m not quitting,” she said, although it felt good to get off her knees. She took out her phone, unblocked Jason’s number, and then texted, “Sorry. I was having a bad day yesterday, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Please forgive me?”
Feeling much better, she slid the phone back into her pocket and went back to scraping.
